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Palantir CEO Alex Karp said some staffers at his software company have exited due to his public support for Israel. And he expects to see more walk out the door.
“We have lost employees. I’m sure we’ll lose employees,” Karp said in an interview Wednesday with CNBC’s “Money Movers.” “If you will have a position that doesn’t cost you ever to lose an worker, it isn’t a position.”
Karp was responding to a matter from anchor Sara Eisen about personnel turnover at the corporate resulting from its controversial stances.
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Palantir, known for its government contract work in defense and intelligence, has provided its technology to support the Ukrainian and Israeli militaries of their respective wars. Israel has vowed to defeat Hamas following the Palestinian militant group’s rampage on Oct. 7 in southern Israel that killed nearly 1,200 people. Greater than 30,000 people have been killed in Gaza because the war began, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry there.
Karp said on Palantir’s earnings call last month he was “exceedingly proud that after Oct. 7, inside weeks, we’re on the bottom and we’re involved in operationally crucial operations in Israel.”
Palantir held its first board meeting of the 12 months in Tel Aviv, Israel, in January, after which the corporate agreed to a “strategic partnership” with the Israeli Ministry of Defense to supply the country with technology for its military efforts. In November, Karp asserted the corporate’s support of the U.S. government and Israel, declaring on an earnings call that “Palantir only supplies its products to Western allies.”
In Wednesday’s interview, Karp reaffirmed his pro-Israel views. Eisen referenced the corporate’s decision in October to take out a full-page ad in The Latest York Times, stating it “stands with Israel.”
Peter Thiel, co-founder and chairman of Palantir Technologies Inc., speaks during a news conference in Tokyo, Japan, on Monday, Nov. 18, 2019.
Kiyoshi Ota | Bloomberg | Getty Images
“We now have a precedent on this culture where individuals are supposed to speak up,” Karp said, regarding the best way Palantir operates. He said that in his communications to his workforce, he doesn’t promise to “let you know something you would like to hear.”
“We’re going to get as close to telling you ways we see the world as we’re legally and ethically allowed to,” he said. “We also do that externally.”
Last week, Palantir secured a $178.4 million contract with the U.S. Army to develop 10 artificial intelligence-powered ground stations, a part of a project called Tactical Intelligence Targeting Access Node, or TITAN.
“From my perspective, it isn’t nearly Israel,” Karp, who co-founded Palantir alongside conservative enterprise capitalists Peter Thiel and Joe Lonsdale, told CNBC. “It’s like, ‘Do you think within the West? Do you think the West has created a superior way of life?'”
Long before the newest crisis in Israel and Gaza, Karp has been vocal on controversial social and political issues, and has attempted to show a transparent contrast between his positions and the views more commonly held by people in San Francisco and Silicon Valley.
In 2020, Palantir relocated its headquarters to Denver from Palo Alto, California. A 12 months earlier, Karp told CNBC the technology community had breached its social contract with America, and blasted tech firms that refuse to work with the federal government to keep the country secure.
“That may be a loser position,” Karp said in a 2019 interview on “Squawk Box” from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “It shouldn’t be intelligible. It shouldn’t be intelligible to the typical person. It’s academically not sustainable. And I’m very comfortable we’re not on that side of the controversy.”
Clarification: This text has been updated to make clear that greater than 30,000 people have been killed in Gaza because the war began, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry there.
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